Application — Intracortical
Case Western iBCI-controlled FES for reaching and grasping, 2017
Case Western iBCI-controlled FES for reaching and grasping, 2017
A combined implanted functional electrical stimulation (FES) and intracortical BCI system that let a man with traumatic high-cervical spinal cord injury move his own paralysed arm. Corresponding author A. Bolu Ajiboye, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Case Western Reserve University. Published in The Lancet, 2017 (online March 28). Registered in BrainGate2, ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00912041.
Participants and hardware
- One participant, a 53-year-old man with cervical level 4 spinal cord injury (ASIA category A).
- Two intracortical microelectrode arrays in the hand area of motor cortex, implanted December 1, 2014. Later, 4 months and 9 months after that, a total of 36 percutaneous electrodes were implanted in his right upper and lower arm to stimulate hand, elbow and shoulder muscles.
- A motorised mobile arm support gave gravitational assistance and humeral abduction and adduction under cortical control.
- Surgery was at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center; study procedures and analysis at Case Western Reserve University and the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center (affiliation: Functional Electrical Stimulation Center of Excellence).
- The paper cites the Utah intracortical electrode array in its references; see the catalog’s Utah microelectrode array sheet.
Results as stated
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Point-to-point target acquisition | 80 to 100% accuracy, first with a virtual arm, then with his own arm animated by FES; sessions began October 8, 2015 (311 days after implant) |
| Drinking coffee | 11 of 12 attempts completed in a single session, 463 days after implant |
| Self-feeding | Performed 717 days after implant |
| Last session reported | November 7, 2016 |
Limits
One participant. The authors call it a proof-of-concept demonstration and describe it as, to their knowledge, the first combined implanted FES plus iBCI neuroprosthesis for reaching and grasping. The funding statement names the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Primary sources
- Ajiboye AB et al., Restoration of reaching and grasping movements through brain-controlled muscle stimulation in a person with tetraplegia: a proof-of-concept demonstration, The Lancet (2017), DOI 10.1016/S0140-6736(17)30601-3.